Ekkehart Paditz, Dresden: Baby sleep – supine sleeping position for infants from antiquity to the start of the SIDS prone position disaster 1931. Current Children’s Sleep Medicine 2021. kleanthes, Dresden 20 Apr. 2023. ISBN 978-3-942622-25-7. 120 pages, 52 illustrations, 239 references to literature and sources from Mesopotamia, Rigveda, Bible, Talmud, Ancient Egypt, Greek antiquity, the Middle Ages and the modern era./ Felix Klee and Prince Edward as sleeping babies In 1907, Paul Klee photographed his son Felix in Munich as a baby sleeping on his back. Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, also slept on his back in his pram in 1936, as a photo published for the first time shows. The paediatrician Prof Ekkehart Paditz used numerous documents from textbooks, guidebooks, drawings, paintings and photographs to show that babies sleeping on their backs constituted the traditional nursing behaviour that has been taught and practised since ancient times through the Middle Ages until the middle of the 20th century. Supine as the sleeping position for infants since ancient times The famous Greek doctor Soranus of Ephesus pointed this out as early as 100 AD and Roman remains from Herculaneum in 79 AD and Cologne around 230 AD can prove that babies sleeping on their backs was not only taught but also normal in everyday practice. Bartholomäus Metlinger supported the position of Soranus in 1473 in one of the first textbooks for paediatrics and obstetrics, just as Eucharius Roesslin did in his Rose Garden in 1513. These are long-selling and best-selling books that have appeared in at least 208 editions up until the 20th century. In numerous textbooks for paediatrics, gynaecology and obstetrics in the period between 1899 and 1931, we find identical instructions that are also included in widespread medical guidebooks. Friedrich August Ammon’s guide The First Mother’s Duties appeared in the years 1827-1907 in 40 editions; the “Century Book”, The Woman as a Family Doctor by Anna Fischer-Dückelmann from Dresden circulated in the years 1901-1913 with one million copies sold and it was translated into more than 10 languages. From 1907, Arthur Schlossmann, the paediatrician who practised in Dresden and Düsseldorf, published Care for the Child in the First Two Years of Life, an inexpensive booklet of 42 pages, which appeared in 14 editions in rapid succession. In a series of systematically collected images from 1496 with Dürer’s woodcut Flight from Egypt and photographs (1850-1954) from Central Europe, Asia and North America, there is a documentary record that Felix Klee and Prince Edward were placed on their backs to sleep, in keeping with the trends at the time. From 1906, the American photographer Edward Curtius presented more than 2,400 photographs of the lives of the original inhabitants of North America, the Indians, among whom babies can also be seen sleeping on their backs. The SIDS pandemic (prone position disaster) from 1931: Overcoming it and avoiding it From 1931, a tragic break with tradition began with the recommendation of Alfred F. Hess and David Greene from New York, which culminated in the pandemic SIDS prone position disaster and cost the lives of several hundred thousand infants worldwide as a result of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Since then, more than 40 case control studies have proven that the prone position for sleeping infants is one of the essential SIDS risk factors that can be influenced. After this finding was disseminated, Germany also recorded a 93% decrease in the frequency of SIDS. As the result of the epistemological considerations and those based on scientific theory, the author of this medical-historical monograph comes to the conclusion that the prone position disaster could have been largely avoided from today’s perspective ex post as well as ex ante. The medical historian Hans-Georg Hofer from Münster agrees with this summation in the foreword. This new chapter in the history of infant care may contribute to our understanding of pandemics and how to prevent and deal with them.weiterlesen